At first Nolan seem to understand the character. Then in the last movie it was like he forgot everything...WTF??! At the end of Batman Begins there's a scene at the end of the movie that showed me that Nolan "gets it"! The scene was at Bruce's destroyed mansion, when Rachel tells Bruce "and then I saw your true face". Bruce says "Batman is only a symbol". She touches his face and says..."no Bruce, this is your mask, your true face is the one that Gotham's criminals now fear."
And that the key to the character....he IS BATMAN! There is no Bruce Wayne. She said she kept waiting for the day when Bruce Wayne would come back...but he never did.

And that's what Nolan forgot in "Rises". At the beginning of the movie Batman has quit for 7 years because of the death of Rachel? If anything...her death would have only added fuel to the fire of the REAL Batman! He would have gone after criminals with even more of a vengeance than before...not quit and hide in his mansion!?How did Nolan lose touch so badly with character in his 3rd movie? And at the end Batman retires? Again...WTF??

Not to mention Batman is hardly in his own movie...they should have called it "Bane". Batman only appears at the beginning...and at the end. Sad.

I'm the biggest Batman fan there is...and I won't ever own TDKR! Not even if I saw it on Bluray in the $4.99 bin.

End of rant.

Why do so many people mistake Batman's retirement being a result of Rachel's death? If Rachel dying was enough to make Batman throw in the towel then he wouldn't have gone after the Joker and stopped his rampage after she died.

The reason Batman was retired is because Harvey Dent's heroic image and legacy cleaned up Gotham's crime so well that Batman wasn't needed any more. Remember this key scene;

Gordon: "We were in this together and then you were gone"
Bruce: "The Batman wasn't needed any more. We won"
Gordon: "Based on a lie"

Rachel is the reason why Bruce gave up on trying to find himself some kind of normal life after he hung up the cape and cowl. Again two key scenes spell this out;

Bruce: "There's nothing out there for me"
Alfred: "And that's the problem. You hung up your cape and your cowl but you never moved on. You never went to find yourself a life. To find someone"
Bruce: "Alfred, I did find someone"
Alfred: "I know, and you lost 'em. But that's all part of living"

Alfred: "You used to talk about finishing. About finding a life beyond that awful cave"
Bruce: "Alfred, Rachel died knowing we had decided to be together. I can't just move on. She didn't. She couldn't"
Alfred: "What if she had?"
Bruce: "She couldn't...I can't change that"
Alfred: "What if before she died she wrote a letter saying she chose Harvey Dent over you.....and what if to spare you pain I burned that letter"
Bruce: "How dare you use Rachel to try to stop me"

The movie makes it very clear, but so many people always say he quit being Batman because Rachel was dead.

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"Sometimes I remember it one way. Sometimes another. If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"